Chapter 552: For the Glory of Beijing University
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Professor Yao did not care if he would embarra.s.s Professor Guo a little.
He spread the two papers out on President Mu’s table and dragged Tan Mo to sit down in front of them.
“Come, Tan Mo, why don’t you solve these three questions and give Professor Guo a lesson?” Professor Yao asked in a loud tone.
President Mu was rendered completely speechless by Professor Yao’s action.
‘Did you seriously just tell Tan Mo to give Professor Guo a lesson? If he gets angry and leaves, you better get him back or find me someone as good as him!’
The president was scolding him in his head.
Seeing that the head of the Department of Mathematics was practically begging her, Tan Mo had no choice but to give in. “Fine…” She nodded.
She thought that if all she needed to do was partic.i.p.ate in compet.i.tions, then it would not take too much of her time.
“Anyone have a pen?” Tan Mo asked without any restrain, even though she was in her university president’s office.
President Mu quickly handed Tan Mo a fountain pen.
She took it from him naturally, making it seem like the president was her personal butler.
Tan Mo started to tackle the first question.
After reading the question, she began to solve it.
“President Mu! Hurry up and get her some papers to draft on!” Professor Yao urged.
The president raised a brow, thinking that Professor Yao was a little daring.
Even Professor Guo had the same thought, wondering if Professor Yao was acting like that because he managed to convince Tan Mo to join them.
President Mu quickly found a few pieces of A4 papers and put them on the table. “Here. Use these,” the president said.
Tan Mo nodded and moved the papers next to her writing hand where she could comfortably reach them before continuing with solving the questions.
Once she started, Professor Guo didn’t even pay any attention to his colleague or the president anymore.
All his focus was s.h.i.+fted onto Tan Mo, who was solving the questions that he had come up with.
It didn’t take long for the young lady to fill the empty s.p.a.ce below the first question with formulas and calculations.
After a moment of hesitation, she moved her pen to the A4 paper that President Mu had prepared and copied everything that she had written onto there.
Professor Guo could only express his shock by nodding back and forth as he watched.
As Tan Mo’s writing was neat, it was very easy for him to read, especially when he was farsighted.
After solving the first question, Tan Mo immediately started to tackle the second one without taking any rest in between.
It was as if she didn’t need her brain to cool down a little.
Professor Guo’s attention also followed her to the second question.
Whenever Tan Mo wrote a line, he would read a line.
When Tan Mo wrote the answer, he would be able to see it right away.
He could immediately confirm if Tan Mo was right or wrong.
Up until then, Tan Mo was completely correct in every step and answer.
To make matters more interesting, it only took Tan Mo less than 30 minutes to complete the first two questions.
The three questions that Professor Guo had prepared were the hardest in any mathematics compet.i.tion.
There would only be a handful of students who could solve them correctly.
To be able to solve them correctly and do so without any hiccups along the way like Tan Mo did would be amazingly rare.
Tan Mo started to work on the third question as soon as she finished the second one.
What shocked Professor Guo the most was that Tan Mo did not need any time to come up with a plan when tackling the questions. She was able to start the solving process as soon as she finished reading the question.
“It’s done,” Tan Mo said as soon as she finished the third question while putting President Mu’s fountain pen down on the table.
“Professor Guo, why don’t you take a look at it?” Professor Yao asked with a grin.
“There’s no need for that. I’ve been watching her as soon as she started,” Professor Guo replied. He was sure that Tan Mo had never seen the questions before as he was the one who created them.
Even if he were to select three questions randomly from past compet.i.tions, it was most likely that Tan Mo had never seen them before either.
In the end, Tan Mo was not a student of the Department of Mathematics. Her schedule was pretty much filled with other activities. There was no way she would have the time to go and read every mathematics question out there.
“She solved all three of them, and her solving process was genius. With how talented you are, why didn’t you choose to come to our department?” Professor Guo sighed and turned to glare at President Mu. “Our department has been weaker compared to other universities, and we need talented students like Tan Mo here. Why didn’t you get her into our department first? What are you waiting for? To see us keep losing to Hua University over and over again?”
The more that Professor Guo thought about how Tan Mo was helping Professor Gu, Professor Tan, Professor Yue, and Professor He but not him, the angrier he got.
“The first choice for all the mathematics geniuses is always Hua University. After all those years, aren’t you ashamed of it?” Professor Guo added.
Tan Mo was starting to feel bad for the president for being yelled at by all those top professors in the university.
President Mu could only sigh and say, “If Professor Gu and Professor Tang heard that, they would fight you to the death…”
For the first time, the president thought that it was a great thing that Tan Mo was a student of the Department of Finance.
The department had acted like a neutral zone for everything that was revolving around her.
If she were to become a student of either the Chinese literature, history, or mathematics departments, it would be a war between them.
That was why it was good that Tan Mo remained in the Department of Finance.
Professor Guo could not refute that as it wasn’t a good idea to clash with the other professors, especially when they were old already.
President Mu smiled and asked, “So, Professor Guo, what do you think of our Tan Mo here?”
Professor Guo rolled his eyes back and scolded, “I was literally asking you to move her to my department. What do you think?”
“Then, the compet.i.tion?” President Mu asked.
For an instant, Professor Gu suddenly noticed how cunning the president’s smile was.
He had to hold his urge back to kick the president out of the office.
“Of course, we are letting her partic.i.p.ate!” Professor Guo suddenly got excited at the thought of it. “How can we leave her out on things that will bring glory to our university? She has represented both the Chinese literature and history departments before, right? What’s stopping her from representing the Department of Mathematics too?”
It was Professor Yao’s time to smile wryly.
‘Who said that I wasn’t good enough to determine Tan Mo’s talent and wanted to check her out on his own? So? Did you get what you wanted?’
“Tan Mo, we have an important compet.i.tion coming up next month. Have you heard of the S.-T. Yau College Student Mathematics Contest?” Professor Yao asked Tan Mo.
The student nodded. “Yes. It’s a well-known mathematics compet.i.tion in our country. Some of the top awards in our country are the Hua Loo-Keng Prize of Mathematics, which focuses on a.n.a.lysis and differential equations; the Chern Medal, which focuses on geometry and topology; the Wei-Liang Chow Award, which focuses on algebra, linear combination, and number theory; the Pao-Lu Hsu Award, which focuses on probability and statistics; and the Chia-Chiao Lin Award, which focuses on applied mathematics and computational mathematics. The S.-T. Yau Award is awarded to those who do best in all of the awards mentioned above combined.”
“Yes, all of these awards are important. We did fine in group compet.i.tions in the past, but we could never win the S.-T. Yau Award.” Professor Yao sighed.
“When I heard from Professor Yao that you are talented in mathematics as well, I had been pondering if I should ask you to help us or not…” President Mu sighed. “Tan Mo, I hope you can partic.i.p.ate in the contest this year and see what result we can get. Perhaps we can at least not embarra.s.s ourselves again.”
“I see…” Tan Mo thought for a moment before nodding.. “I’ll give it a try.”